The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Scott Lynch Page 0,156

of chain wrapped in very fine leather—likely kid. “It’s called a bailiff’s lash; wrapped up so it doesn’t rattle. If you look close, it’s got little hooks at either end, so you can hitch it around your waist like a belt. Easy to conceal under heavier clothes… though you might eventually need one a bit longer, to fit around yourself.” The don stepped forward confidently and let one end of the padded chain whip toward the woundman’s head; it rebounded off the leather with a loud, wet whack.

Jean amused himself for a few minutes by laying into the woundman while Don Maranzalla watched. Mumbling to himself, the don then took the padded chain away and offered Jean a pair of matched blades. They were about a foot long, one-sided, with broad and curving cutting edges. The hilts were attached to heavy handguards, which were studded with small brass spikes.

“Nasty little bitches, these things. Generally known as thieves’ teeth. No subtlety to them; you can stab, hack, or just plain punch. Those little brass nubs can scrape a man’s face off, and those guards’ll stop most anything short of a charging bull. Have at it.”

Jean’s showing with the blades was even better than his outing with the lash; Maranzalla clapped approvingly. “That’s right, up through the stomach, under the ribs. Put a foot of steel there and tickle a man’s heart with it, and you’ve just won the argument, son.”

As he took the matched blades back from Jean, he chuckled. “How’s that for teeth lessons, eh, boy? Eh?”

Jean stared at him, puzzled.

“Haven’t you ever heard that one before? Your Capa Barsavi, he’s not from Camorr, originally. Taught at the Therin Collegium. So, when he drags someone in for a talking-to, that’s ‘etiquette lessons.’ And when he ties them up and makes them talk, that’s ‘singing lessons.’ And when he cuts their throats and throws them in the bay for the sharks…”

“Oh,” said Jean, “I guess that’d be teeth lessons. I get it.”

“Right. I didn’t make that one up, mind you. That’s your kind. I’d lay odds the big man knows about it, but nobody says anything like that to his face. That’s how it always is, be it cutthroats or soldiers. So… next lovely toy…”

Maranzalla handed Jean a pair of wooden-handled hatchets; these had curved metal blades on one side and round counterweights on the other.

“No fancy name for these skull-crackers. I wager you’ve seen a hatchet before. Your choice to use the blade or the ball; it’s possible to avoid killing a man with the ball, but if you hit hard enough it’s just as bad as the blade, so judge carefully when you’re not attacking a woundman.”

Almost immediately, Jean realized that he liked the feel of the hatchets in his hands. They were long enough to be more than a pocket weapon, like the gimp steel or the blackjacks most Right People carried as a matter of habit, yet they were small enough to move swiftly and use in tight spaces, and it seemed to him they could hide themselves rather neatly under a coat or vest.

He crouched; the knife-fighter’s crouch seemed natural with these things in his hands. Springing forward, he chopped at the woundman from both sides at once, embedding the hatchet blades in the dummy’s ribs. With an overhand slash to the woundman’s right arm, he made the whole thing shudder. He followed that cut with a backhanded stroke against the head, using a ball rather than a blade. For several minutes, he chopped and slashed at the woundman, his arms pistoning, a smile growing on his face.

“Hmmm. Not bad,” said Don Maranzalla. “Not bad at all for a total novice, I’ll grant you that. You seem very comfortable with them.”

On a whim, Jean turned and ran to one side of the courtyard, putting fifteen feet between himself and the woundman. The driving rain thrust fingers of gray down between him and the target, so he concentrated very hard—and then he lined up and threw, whipping one hatchet through the air with the full twisting force of his arm, hips, and upper body. The hatchet sank home, blade flat-on, in the woundman’s head, where it held fast in the layers of leather without so much as a quiver.

“Oh, my,” said Don Maranzalla. Lightning roiled the heavens yet again, and thunder echoed across the rooftop. “My, yes. Now there’s a foundation we can build upon.”

Chapter Ten

Teeth Lessons

1

IN THE DARKNESS beneath the Echo Hole, Jean Tannen was moving